Kaze Hikari
by IHKF
Summary: Kasumi is woken up in the middle of the night to an attack on the village she's staying at. No.. Hayate and Ayane couldn't be so desperate get her, could they be? She wouldn't believe it. They would NEVER stoop so low. So who would? Prequel to "Mama".


JUST A WARNING!

If you have not read my story "Mama" you PROBABLY wanna go do that now seeing as how it would make a load of this make WAY more sense. ._. This story is a prequel to "Mama". The one person who reviewed said they had more questions about the clan that I created and I figured that since I was itching to write more about them anyways I may as well make a second one-shot. I hope everybody who reads this enjoys. I was hit by inspiration suddenly while watching the first episode of Maji de Watashi Ni Koi Shinasai. It's a really fantastic anime so far and I think you all should check it out! :D

Anyways, onto the story. I'm truly sorry if Kasumi seems out of character- this is me trying to write a character I've only written once before. ^^'

Please leave a review if you read it, I'm trying out a new style of writing and I'd like to know if it's working! ^_^

Thank you!

(P.S: I am a complete RyuxKasumi shipper. :3)

_**^/^ ^/^ ^/^ ^/^**_

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"Nii-san!"

Ayumu instantly responded to Akemi's call, unsheathing his sword. His grip tightened on the handle as he ran across the trees as if they were the floor, cutting and even branding enemy ninjas as they fell to the ground.

"Akemi, what the hell is wrong with you? I told you to be careful not to get surrounded."

"Yes, Nii-san, you also said that if I _were_ to find myself surrounded then you would rush to my side to help me."

Ayumu sighed vindictively at his sister's statement. He recognized the irritated look on the face so much like his own and decided that he'd pick a fight with her later. Akemi raised her leg, kicking one ninja down, at the same time dodging another ninja's sword, quickly turning back around and raising her other leg to upper-cut the ninja she hadn't already taken care of. She rolled off of the still falling ninja's back. Landing on her feet as the two fell over each-other. Ayumu raised his sword once more dicing the ninjas one by one. He cringed suddenly as his back tensed and he shivered at the feeling. Knowing what it meant, he cut the ninja in front of him on the shoulder to leave a gash. The ninja began to fall forward and just as he did Ayumu hopped onto his shoulders and jumped backwards, just in time to have the ninja that he had felt seconds before dig his sword into his comrade's head.

The two blonde-haired twelve-year-olds backed up into each-other, Akemi raising her fists and Ayumu readying his sword.

Not taking their bloody confidantes as a warning, new ninjas surrounded the two, their swords ready to terminate the children. Akemi smirked. "Neh, Nii-san? Is it time to use-"

"Do you even need to ask? You know how much I love using Kaze Hikari!"

He quickly placed his sword back into his sheath, turning around to face the green-eyed girl.

Akemi felt her body ease as her brother's red fiery eyes met her own. That look on her face- on his- meant he was confident they would be alright.

The two reached up and grabbed the other's wrist in one hand and their other hand in the other, fingers entwined.

Chiyo watched from a near-by branch as a blinding yellow light surrounded the siblings and brought the surrounding ninjas into the air. The few that were smart enough to dig their swords into the ground or into a tree were screaming just as loud- if not louder- than their floating companions, as they were either blinded in the light too beautiful to look away from, or the warmth of it all slowly disintegrated their bodies.

Being a safe distance from it all Chiyo leered almost violently, her eyes showcasing deadly malicious-looking pupils as they opened wide. She chuckled sadistically and gripped the bladed, decorated, fans in her short, bedecked, kimono. "Oh my, I suppose it's my turn already, neh, Haruna-san?"

Said blonde- almost pink- haired woman behind her raised an eyebrow. "Gods, you live for the battle, don't you?"

The raven-headed ninja rolled her eyes and snorted. "When I'm on the battlefield, yes."

She flipped off of the tree and into the air, right into the cyclone of light the younger ones had created. She quickly pulled a mask over her face and pulled the ribbon that had tied her hair back into a pony-tail over her eyes, knowing that she could rely perfectly on her other senses.

"Akemi, Ayumu! I need a push!"

The two looked up and gasped at Chiyo's sudden jump into their light of death. "ARE YOU NUTS?!"

"HOW THE HELL AREN'T YOU SUFFOCATING?!"

"That doesn't matter! Just give me a shove!"

Ayumu exhaled. "You see? This is why I hate women. They're FINE at my age and younger but any older and they're a freaking nuisance!"

Akemi sweat-dropped at her brother's comments and used a little more energy than before to twirl the both of them (she was physically the stronger one), picking up the speed in the hurricane they had created.

Chiyo flew out of the tornado, yelping a quick thanks and she landed in the middle of a group of approaching ninjas. "You boys wanted to play capture the flag?" She sneered. "Here! Capture it!"

She whipped out one of her fans, throwing it and cutting a few ninjas in half in the process. The remaining ninjas charged at her as she quickly found another fans and tossed it before finding another and merely pointing it at the ninjas behind her. The blades that decorated the fan like diamonds or sparkles shot out in spread-out groups, tunneling right through some.

"Chiyo-chan! WATCH OUT!"

The geisha-like ninja inhaled and twisted around, another sword coming in between her and the one that would have shanked her.

Haruna groaned impatiently, lashing her leg and thrusting the surprised ninja right in his side. He fell to the ground as she bent down speedily, dodging another oncoming ninja, jabbing her sword into his stomach and, as opposed to yanking it out, pulled it to the side to leave a huge gash from his middle to his side. Her body-suit clung to her as she stood back up again, reaching for a walkie-talkie tucked in her nearly invisible pocket. "The front line is pretty much cleared, Riku. We've got it covered." She turned and took a look at the remaining hordes approaching rapidly.

Riku glared down at the walkie-talkie that spouted the voice of his older friend. He waited for her to speak again of their position and was not disappointed.

"They're gaining speed but they're lacking in numbers- and in strength. I'm surprised this is all the Mugen Tenshin Clan has to offer."

"It's not." He answered, picking it up and responding. "They simply don't see us as something to truly bother with." He took a sword off of a wall. The handle of the blade was a glowing blue color, almost glowing. The blade seemed to be made of some kind of crystal or diamond, but he knew that this was merely the appearance. The blade was one-hundred percent of… whatever the hell it was blades were typically made out of. There were many things he knew as the leader of his clan (well, he was MOSTLY the leader, he took that responsibility when his parents were away) but the materials that a sword was made out of was certainly not something he bothered to make two heads of.

"What?" Haruna's disgruntled reply came.

"As far as they're concerned, if we accepted a runaway shinobi into our clan then we must have needed all the help we could get."

But that was far from the truth.

Kasumi's coppery eyes narrowed at the blade he held, her head looking down at her folded hands as she sat. "Riku, I'm sorry to have caused you all so much trouble."

"The moment you became a member of our clan you were somebody that I personally decided we would protect." Kasumi looked up, cheeks flushing at the sudden comment. "A member of our own is somebody whose life is worth protecting."

His sword was placed delicately into its sheath as he turned to face her. "That is what my parents have taught me, that is how they run this place, and that is how I will run this place." The runaway shinobi nodded rapidly, standing and pulling her sword off of the wall.

"Regardless, thank you."

He smiled to himself and nodded, heading to the door.

"Come on, now, if we take care of their leader then the rest won't have any further orders to go on and retreat."

Haruna growled at Riku's last words to her as she avoided yet another attack, almost dancing around the enemies, causing them to kill one-another. "Seriously, who had the idea to put that runt in charge?"

Akemi laughed nervously.

"You don't typically speak that way of Riku-kun."

Haruna turned and blasted her voice at the younger one. Akemi could have sworn her head grew three times in size. "OF COURSE I DON'T, DIMWIT! BUT THIS IS AN EXCEPTION!"

"Eep! Okay! Sorry! Sorry!"

Chiyo landed on her feet, back towards Ayumu. "These bastards just keep coming!"

"Well it's not like we've been doing anything to scare 'em off."

_Oh… so Kaze Hikari didn't count?_

"Come on guys, we've just gotta hold on until Riku and Kasu-chan take down their leader, then we'll be fine!"

Chiyo placed a finger on her chin, eyes suddenly wide and bubbly. "Hey, wait… isn't the leader Kasumi's brother?"

"OH MY GOD! YOU CAN'T BE THAT STUPID! WE DON'T MEAN THE 'LEADER' LEADER! WE MEAN THE GENERAL!"

"Ohhhhh…."

"Incoming!"

The four ninjas dodged the bombs that hit where they had been moments before.

"Goodness! And Kasumi was taking down these things on her own for HOW long?" Haruna's motherly voice came out in the open as her sword was readied once more.

Ayumu sweat-dropped. _Did you seriously just call ninjas 'things'?!_

"When the hell did they learn to use bombs?!" Chiyo whined, stomping her foot. "YOU LOOSERS! YOU'RE NINJAS NOT SOLDIERS!"

"Chiyo-chan, calm down! You KNOW how bad it is for you to get angry when fighting."

"Is she really that dangerous?"

"Well, yeah." Haruna deadpanned. "Just take a look at the human heads she has hanging in her room some time."

"That's it! I've had ENOUGH of this!" Chiyo grabbed five fans in both hands. "Die, bitches!"

In a few short seconds her deadly fans were soaring through the air, knocking a handful of ninjas down. "Oi!" Ayumu complained, the three Kibō Clan ninjas ducked in response to their friend's fans. "Be careful with those things, you ditz! You're gonna kill us all!"

Another ninja hit the floor, their mask parting with their face to reveal that half was missing. Riku continued the cut a path for Kasumi as the ninjas that he left behind fell only when Kasumi felt they had to. She had asked Riku to lead the way, knowing he was the one who had no trouble killing. She knew it annoyed him to some extent she refused to do any more than she absolutely HAD to. In some cases, they ended up not completing missions because she hadn't been hard enough mentally to take the life of the person they had been asked to.

But that was alright, and besides a sore Ayumu and Riku, she went unpunished. After all, the clan was practically founded on "to hell with the rules, do the right thing", which of course was unoriginal and overused, but she wouldn't complain because it was different from how she had been taught before- and she found it matched closer to her morals than her old clan had.

It left a sour taste in her mouth to think that even after four years she was still being hunted mercilessly- even more-so that they would bring down an entire clan to have her killed.

_No, no this must NOT be Hayate; Hayate would never stoop so low!_

But Ayane was a different story, right?

Kasumi angrily shook the thought from her mind. No, Ayane wasn't that bad. She may have been more reckless and inexperienced than Hayate was but that didn't mean she would do this. This could start an entire war between the Mugen Tenshin Clan and the Kibō Clan!

_So then who sent these men after me?_

Could there be some outer influence controlling Hayate or Ayane?

Or was she really that much of a thorn in their side that she truly needed to be ended in their eyes?

She pressed her lips together.

Oh god, that thought was as sour as a lemon.

"Kasumi, our snipers are telling me we're almost there. Just a little lounger and this will all be over." Riku's soothing voice reached her ears, just when she needed it, as usual. Just as Ryu did, Riku always seemed to know exactly what to say and when to say it- evidence that he was indeed the son of the clan's leaders. He would make a great leader, she knew.

Ryu…

The thing that perhaps drove her the most to stay here, in the arms of her new-found friends and family, was the fact that she had recently met a beautiful woman named Irene…

…_who she found out was married to Ryu_.

She felt numb at first, very accepting of it all. Ryu was such a catch, why wouldn't he have a beautiful woman to return home to?

She had shook the woman's hand, stayed the night, thanked them for their generosity and left as quickly as she could bring herself to run.

It was only a month later that she had been as weak as to fall to Riku's feet while their entire clan was out shopping.

_Just a little further… just a little further and I'll have my answers!_

Akemi and Ayumu fell to the ground, sighing in relief as Alpha knocked down a ninja or ten, her quick liquid-like movements scaring and shocking some. "Al-chan, Kasu-chan said you shouldn't be out here fighting with us." The tone that Chiyo held would have been extremely cute had it not been for the deadly expression she held once more.

Alpha turned to stare blankly at the Geisha Ninja.

…

"What is your point?"

Chiyo practically fell over in her bipolar-ness.

"You said you wanted to be her daughter so that means you follow her rules!"

"Perhaps she's reached adolescence?" Haruna suggested, putting away her sword for what she hoped would be the last time of the night. "I certainly hope not, she is NOT ready to go out shopping after what she did to that poor dog when we took her out last week!" Akemi whined. Ayumu shivered in the memory.

"Let's not mention Aoi-san's dog, shall we?"

"Poor dog… never even saw it coming…"

"I bet it's scarred…"

Alpha simply blinked and watched the siblings in what seemed to be confusion and curiosity.

"Hey, you two, quit it. We're done here; we may wanna help Riku and Kasumi."

"We've got it." The group of five turned to Haruna's walkie-talkie as Riku's voice emerged from the device.

"We've taken care of the group patrolling around their master's hideout. All that's left is to confront him."

"How do you know it's a him?" Chiyo was instantly back to her typical bubbly personality. "What if it's a girl?"

Riku breathed in exasperation as his eyebrow twitched. "FINE… All that's left is to confront… IT."

Kasumi was somewhere in the background, shaking her head and giggling.

"Well now that's just not fair, he and or she sounds like a monster now."

"ALL THAT'S LEFT IS TO CONFRONT HIM OR HER!"

"That's better!"

Haruna glared in Chiyo's direction as a warning to shut up. Once the ninja complied she turned back to the walkie-talkie, staring down at it with a half-hearted half-cocky smile. "Stay safe, Riku… and keep Kasu-chan safe, too."

"Have you met me, Haruna?"

She laughed.

"Yeah, yeah… just both of you… Get back safely."

"You hear that, Kasumi?" Riku chuckled as he set the walkie-talkie away. "Don't die on me."

Kasumi blushed up, recalling Ryu saying such a thing to her back when she went to face Alpha (back before the copy decided it wanted to be her daughter as opposed to her enemy).

"R-right!"

With that, Riku slammed the "door" of the "tent" the Leader had been hiding out in.

Kasumi sighed in relief upon seeing it was an unfamiliar face.

As for how the battle went, there hardly _was _one.

Once Kasumi and Riku had taken down his remaining guards the man commanding them folded in fear, begging for his life- something the two almost expected him to do.

The next day, after they had taken him into the custody of their "jail", he was interrogated and prodded by Haruna for information as Kasumi stood by in the room as the good cop.

He revealed that he was indeed _not _a part of the Mugen Tenshin Clan and that they had merely heard tales of the runaway shinobi Kasumi, and had figured that if they could capture her then they could threaten the clan for women, food, and money- of course not realizing that in the Mugen Tenshin Clan running away meant death so they probably wouldn't have given them ANYTHING for Kasumi's life.

Kasumi sighed as she took a deep sip of her honey tea, calmly sitting on the edge of the lake that resided near her room in the main building. "I'm doing fine." She finally answered Riku as she stared down into her reflection. She could see him sit down clearly as he appeared next to her in the picture the lake displayed. "I suppose I'm just a little shaken up… I thought that Hayate or Ayane wanted to kill me so badly as to take down the village."

"Oh come on, they're not that stupid."

"I know they aren't- which is why the thought of them sending ninjas to destroy the village and retrieve me baffled me. I know that they had orders to kill me and all, but I knew the Hayate and Ayane I knew would never go so far."

"And you were right, they didn't."

"Yes but… I haven't _truly _interacted with either of them in four years. What if they _would _try that now?"

She looked up from the water solemnly.

Chiyo was laughing like an idiot as Akemi and Ayumu fought each-other, rolling around in the dirt and throwing punches but never kicks. Alpha sat on the rock that was next to Chiyo's, sipping herbal tea- which had quickly become her favorite as soon as she joined the Kibō Clan. She could see that Haruna was watching the two of them, a mischievous smile that reached her eyes upon her lips.

_Haruna, it's a friend-to-friend talk… if you and Chiyo tease me about having my first "milk-shake" with him again I think I'm going to blow a gasket._

"I don't think I have an answer for that, Kasumi. But judging by your personality I'd say they'd probably be a little more subtle and polite than that."

She smiled at him and tilted her head to the side, her light blue and pink stone-like colored kimono moving a little so that she'd have to readjust it. "Oh, you think so?"

He smiled back at her, nodding.

… And Kasumi could see Chiyo and Haruna slowly sliding into the background behind him, making kissy faces.

Kasumi pouted mentally at the two of them, her eyebrow physically twitching in annoyance. She was pretty sure you could see a vein pulsing in anger at the two. Doing what she was trained to do as opposed to losing her temper, she put on a small smile and used the sweetest voice she could muster for her mood.

"Oh, and by the way, I think it's Chiyo-chan's turn to have clean-up duty, and she said that she felt lonely cleaning up all the blood and kunai outside the village gates the last time so I think Haruna-chan should accompany her."

The women behind her instantly silently gasped and started flipping out, noiselessly begging her not to do that to them.

Riku blinked, surprised by his partner's sudden shift in conversation, but nodded. "Oh, okay then…" He turned around to face the two, who instantly ceased movement and stared at him, sweating. "Hey you two, the sooner we get that mess cleaned up the sooner the little ones can go picking flowers again."

"Yes sir…" The two began to slump away with the cleaning supplies, throwing death glares back at the equally vexed Kasumi.

_We love you, Riku… we really do._

It wasn't even a week later before Kasumi got that visit from the three ninjas she didn't quite expect to see.


End file.
